“Change” 12 Months Later

Victor Davis Hanson has a great article reprinted on RCP which deals with a retrospective on the year that was. Since Obama’s “change” mantra was embedded in our brains in such a “Sieg Heil” kind of way this past year, I thought Hanson’s take on what “change” means about a month-and-a-half after Election Day was enlightening:

Imagine the election chances of a candidate Obama in the Democratic primaries had he announced publicly in January what he just now concluded in December:

“Vote for my change and I promise you more of Bob Gates at Defense, my rival Hillary Clinton (with help from Bill) at State, Gen. James L. Jones as national security adviser, Clinton pros John Podesta and Rahm Emanuel running my transition — and the evangelical pastor Rick Warren conducting my Inaugural invocation. And what I am saying now about wiretaps, NAFTA, the Patriot Act, campaign financing, Iran, Iraq, missile defense, coal and nuclear power and taxes will have to be changed when I’m elected.”

After the Clinton stuff, that’s “change” I can deal with for now. I had a hunch that Obama’s leftist national security stances would change the moment he saw the same intelligence Bush sees everyday. And it mostly has to our benefit. Now that economic stuff is much more scary!